


How Luminous Is Darkness

by Kastaka



Category: Bible - Hebrew Bible or Old Testament
Genre: Yuletide, challenge:NYR 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-01
Updated: 2008-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-14 23:34:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/pseuds/Kastaka





	How Luminous Is Darkness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mjules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjules/gifts).



 

 

"Wash and perfume yourself, and put on your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing floor, but don't let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do."

Her skin was no stranger to perfume, but she shivered as she washed herself in the small house she shared with her mother. She would not think of her as merely a mother-in-law. She would not think of her as Mara. She was Naomi. Under all life's troubles, she was still the pleasant lady who had brought Ruth her sons and her God, however she wished to think of herself at the moment. Already they had enough food, more than enough, enough to sell - and soon, Ruth would secure their future.

It was not that she feared the man. She'd had many suitors in Moab, many powerful and imposing men. She was not nervous of his touch. She'd been married to a wonderful man. She was not a stranger to the secrets of the flesh. It had been a while now, of course, since his death, with the journey from her homeland. But that was not what she feared. She had not become a mother, but she had seen it in her friends. He was not the most beautiful of men, but he seemed kind, and Naomi trusted him.

The perfume she had brought with her was no good. Whether it had spoiled or whether it was just that the fashions of this land had imprinted themselves upon her and were not the fashions of her homeland, she could no longer tell. Naomi had bought her perfume. The proceeds of this harvest might have to last them a long time. Such a luxury was a gamble. Maybe that was what she was afraid of.

Her choice could easily have been taken from her. How lucky she had been, to choose her first husband! How lucky she was, to be the one to approach the man who could be her second. Had he not said as much, in the fields? He had told his men not to touch her. He had warned her against the fields of other men. Other men that could take her by force, and not provide her due but instead swear her to silence such that she could continue to glean in their fields.

She carefully opened the bundle in which she kept her fine clothes. She had brought them from her home but dared not wear them here. They could be damaged. They could attract the wrong kind of attention. A kind of attention she had been all too willing to attract earlier in her life. Now it was right to do so. Now her motives were pure and her aims unquestionably correct. She took out the garments reverentially. A silent prayer was on her lips.

_Please let Naomi be correct. Please let Boaz's intentions be pure._

She could survive if they were not, she swore to herself. She could survive if Naomi had been wrong, too. It would not be as good as the life they were hoping for, but there were other fields, there were other men, there were other ways to get by. She knew that after leaving her family, after leaving her land, after leaving her gods, that Naomi's God would not forsake her.

Each garment was regarded with a strange mixture of sorrow and hope, as she adorned herself with them. A sorrow for what was lost, a nostalgia for her homeland, which she wished she could suppress. A hope for the future that Naomi's advice painted - a new marriage in a new land to a man who seemed to love her and certainly deserved her, deserved better than her in his people's terms.

A chill breeze accompanied her as she slipped out of the house and into the evening, heading swiftly and quietly to the thrashing floor, letting none hear her passing. She knew the area well from her gleaning and her talk with the servant girls, knew the routines of the farm and the house. She hid herself in the place she had thought of when her mother had outlined the plan, an area she was sure was not overlooked or often trafficed.

She studied Boaz as he went about the end of his work and his evening meal. There was a kind of detachment in watching the man she might wed, the man who might bring safety and prosperity to her and her mother. He ate and drank heartily, and Ruth nodded to herself, absent-mindedly. He was older than her by some way, and there were more attractive field-hands and similar prospects, but his actions in private revealed nothing that she had not seen of him in public.

This was an honest man, an open man, a kind man. The kind of man she could grow to love.

Soon enough he lay down to sleep, just as Naomi had told her. She waited in the darkness for many heartbeats, not daring to believe that he was fully taken by slumber. The fear was strong in her heart now. What if she had it all wrong? What if he had no feelings for her, was simply being kind to a foreigner? What if he was angered by her actions, angered by her deception in waiting here for him?

But she knew that she had already taken the gamble. She had taken the gamble when she had accepted his generosity, when she had let Naomi buy the perfume, when she had taken out the remains of her finery and adorned herself with it. To back out now would be foolish. It would cost them dearly, for nothing. It might cost them their best opportunity for future happiness. And there were other factors, things she did not know and could not name, but which hung heavily in the air around her, urging her forwards.

Hesitantly, silently, she approached the sleeping figure. Gently, tentatively, she uncovered his feet. Humbly, gingerly, she lay down beside them. 

 


End file.
